


Stranded and Adrift

by antigrav_vector



Series: Assorted Gift Ficlets [28]
Category: Captain America (MCU), Iron Man (MCU), Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Drowning, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Genetic Experimentation, HYDRA being their usual evil selves, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mission Fic, Missions Gone Wrong, Physical hurt/comfort, canon adjacent, cloning, injuries, very loosely set between CA:TWS and AoU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-23
Updated: 2019-11-23
Packaged: 2021-02-27 00:13:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,260
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21538027
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/antigrav_vector/pseuds/antigrav_vector
Summary: After a mission gone wrong, it's up to Steve to put Bucky back together. And, sure, he's got help. In theory. He's just not sure what a half-octopus man can offer either of them in the way of assistance...
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steven Grant Rogers
Series: Assorted Gift Ficlets [28]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/637109
Comments: 1
Kudos: 34





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Quarra](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quarra/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Heart as Wide as the Ocean](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14996762) by [Quarra](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quarra/pseuds/Quarra). 



> Unbeta’ed. Please excuse any remaining mistakes. 
> 
> Happy birthday, my lovely.

Seeing Bucky's eyes meet his, wide and unsettled and more grey than blue, had Steve immediately on edge. Seeing him turn away from the lab door he'd been about to break down, after a glance through the tiny peephole to check for hostiles only made it worse. 

“Bucky? You alright?” Steve moved to put a hand on his lover’s shoulder, only to have Bucky shy away as though the touch might burn.

“Not right now, Steve,” he said in harsh clipped tones. “We have a mission to do.”

Deciding to let whatever it was go, for the moment, Steve took a look though the peephole, himself, and spotted nothing too out of the ordinary. They were raiding a HYDRA base, with the rest of the team at their backs, so a certain amount of horror was to be expected, but Bucky's reactions had been pretty well hidden under a blank mask of stoicism up til now.

It was worrying to see him react like that. And to a seemingly empty room, at that. There wasn't even one of the hated mindwipe chairs in there to make Bucky react badly. Just some water tanks that looked vaguely like aquariums.

“Iron Man?” Steve decided to check with their resident genius. “Any information on their systems about aquatic experiments?”

“We'll keep an eye peeled, Cap, but there's been nothing like that so far. JARVIS?”

“Of course, Sir,” the AI acknowledged, making sure Steve could hear him as well.

“Thanks. Let me know if you find anything,” Steve replied, then refocused on Bucky, checking on him.

Bucky seemed to have recovered from whatever had surprised him, and was giving Steve an impatient look. “We going in there or not?” He demanded.

“Sure. I just wanted to make sure there was no bizarre HYDRA trap waiting for us.” Steve hefted his shield and brought it sharply down on the door handle, sending a shock up his arm to the shoulder and shearing the handle clear off. An equally sharp kick had the door swinging open to rebound off the wall with a bang.

The room was still deserted, to all appearances. Steve glanced around, then caught Bucky's eyes again. “What upset you so much about an empty room?”

“It ain't empty,” Bucky replied flatly.

Steve looked around pointedly, one more time. “I don't see anyone.”

Looking conflicted, Bucky shook his head. “Your hunch about the aquatic experiments was right,” he said, rather than replying to Steve’s skepticism. “And,” he swallowed, “I'm pretty sure that experiment was me. Is me?”

Caught flatfooted by that assertion, Steve simply stared at him for a few seconds.

“Cap?” Tony's voice came over the comms at just the right moment to break the awkward tension.

“What is it, Iron Man?” 

“I think I found what you were after,” Tony told him.

“This I've gotta hear,” Clint put in. 

“Shut up, Hawkeye,” Natasha scolded him. 

Tony cleared his throat and started talking, ignoring Clint, who tried to complain at Natasha. “Well, there's some records JARVIS managed to dig up that read like an electronic lab notebook. They were doing some kind of genetic tinkering, apparently. I don't know what their sample naming convention is, but it's HYDRA, so we can pretty safely assume it either had something to do with replacing their assassin puppet or some other world domination scheme.”

Bucky scowled, hearing that, and strode over toward the farthest of the tanks from the door.

Steve followed him without a word, and this time he spotted something that made his eyes widen. There was a shadow at the bottom of the tank that vaguely resembled a person.

Or at least the upper half of one. 

“Buck?” He said slowly, “Is that what you saw?”

Bucky shrugged. “If what you see is half man and half octopus, then yeah.”

He hadn't been able to see the octopode half of whatever was in the tank until Bucky'd said that, but now he did.

Steve swallowed hard. “Okay. This... is definitely one of the weirdest things that's ever happened to us.”

Muttering something indistinct under his breath, Bucky rolled his eyes and started looking for a way to open the tank.

Steve shoved his feelings aside as best he could and started helping. They had no idea whether what was in that tank was more human or octopus, but either way they needed to get it -- him? -- out.

“Wait a minute, Buck,” Steve blurted out as a thought occurred to him. “What if it can't breathe air?”

Bucky paused, then shrugged. “We’ll figure something out.”

A moment later, he turned up a panel full of buttons, low on the side of the tank, that seemed to control the water temperature and flow and so on.

Steve couldn't help but think there were a lot more buttons than necessary, and none of them were labeled clearly, but Bucky visibly didn't care, impatient to get the octopus man out of the tank. He simply started pushing buttons, and when the first few did nothing untoward Steve relaxed. 

That turned out to be a big mistake. 

After the third button that Bucky hit, Tony started making surprised noises about something in the computer system. While Steve tried to get a coherent answer out of Tony about what was happening that wasn't him telling Clint and Natasha to get out of dodge or shouting some nonsense about modular viruses and fail-deadly switches, the glass walls of the tank started creaking ominously, then cracking.

Before Steve could react, so did the floor, and then he and Bucky were tumbling down into darkness.


	2. Chapter 2

Steve came to with a groan, his legs submerged in what seemed to be an underground river.

He hurt, from his hair to his toenails, in a way that reminded him painfully strongly of his fight with Bucky aboard the Insight helicarrier and its aftermath. He tried to turn himself on his side and failed.

He tried again, and his body protested that violently, leaving him retching river water and coughing hard enough that it made his whole body spasm.

The fit felt like it lasted an hour, and left him feeling weak enough to just lie back down and try to recover.

A quiet splash broke the silence, and made him realize he'd lost his shield to the darkness. And that there was something -- or someone -- nearby.

“Bucky?” He rasped.

No one answered, but there was another, louder splash, followed by a ringing clang off to his left.

That was a sound he'd have recognised anywhere. His shield!

But where was Bucky? Steve couldn't see his hand even when he brought it up to (carefully, gingerly) touch his face.

If Bucky hadn't washed up with him here, wherever the hell here was, he had probably managed to get clear and was with the team on the surface. Probably worried sick. 

That thought gave him some impetus, but it took him a while to push himself into a sitting position, struggling to breathe halfway evenly through the nausea he felt, and then a while longer to find the strength to get to his hands and knees to search for his shield. He had to try a couple of times before he managed. The first time, he lost his forward progress when he had to vomit some more river water.

Probably concussed, he thought dazedly.

Once he finally got his hands on his shield, he slotted it into the harness on his back and let himself sink down to rest on the rock again. It wasn't comfortable whatsoever but he was too roughed up to stand just yet.

The splashes started again, this time quieter than the first two and rhythmic.

Not sure what to think, Steve decided to wait it out and see what happened. He was in rough enough shape that he wasn't about to go looking for another fight if he didn't have to.

He needed to get back to Bucky. 

Shit, he wasn't thinking clearly. He should've tried the comms the moment he’d opened his eyes. 

But first, he needed to figure out what was coming towards him.

There was a wet slap and the sound of someone breathing hard, and then a body landed next to him with a thump and the very distinctive clang of metal on rock, surprising the daylights out of Steve.

“Bucky?” He asked again and reached out to try to confirm by touch, what he was almost sure was true. 

His hands hit Bucky's weapons harness and then the single-sleeved black leather jacket his lover had decided to keep as a big fuck you to HYDRA.

It took him a few hurried seconds of fumbling to get himself into a position to check on Bucky's pulse and breathing.

Both showed some strain (much like his own surely did right then) but were more or less in normal ranges.

Relief washing over him like a wave, Steve took a shuddering breath and then froze.

He'd felt a flicker of touch, and it hadn't been Bucky.

“Who’s there?” He asked, trying to keep his voice from wavering. 

No one answered verbally, but there was a hum that sounded like an acknowledgement and came from the other side of Bucky's unconscious body.

A few suspicions fell together like puzzle pieces.

The octopus man. It had to be. 

“You helped us, didn't you,” he said, and it wasn't really a question.

Another acknowledgment.

Good, it seemed to at least understand him, even if it didn't speak. Maybe it couldn't. 

“We owe you our lives,” he said, then had to clear his throat so he could continue, “thank you. Do you know how we can get back to the surface?”

There was a pause, and then a hand landed on his, making him jump. “Show,” the octopus man said.

Not entirely sure what that meant, Steve drew breath to ask another question. 

Before he could open his mouth though, there was a splash and the octopus man was gone.

He hadn't expected that.

Steve let his head fall to rest on Bucky's right shoulder with a groan.

It was time to try his comms. He let himself take comfort in Bucky's presence for a few seconds, relieved as hell that Bucky was alright -- well, alive and not obviously injured, at least -- then pushed himself upright, and reached up to turn on his comm. It was of Tony's design, and therefore almost indestructible, but one never knew.

It crackled to life when he tried, though, and the next wave of relief almost knocked him flat again. “Iron Man?” He asked, “Iron Man. Do you copy?”

Static answered him.

Swallowing back the apprehension that tried to make his throat close, Steve tried again. “Iron Man, come in.”

Bucky shifted and made a pained sound as he woke.

That was more than enough to distract Steve from the comms. “Buck? You hurt?”

His lover tried to roll over and stopped halfway with a pained hiss. “Ow. Guess so. What happened?”

“Not sure. You pushed buttons on the tank and I guess you must've tripped some kind of booby trap. Next thing I know I was here. Where’re you hurt?”

Steve felt Bucky shift, then wince. “Bruised ribs. Maybe cracked. Concussion. I'll be vomiting water the second I manage to turn over.”

Nothing too deadly, then, with Bucky's healing factor. “Here, I'll help you,” he offered, and started worming a hand under Bucky's shoulder.

Between the two of them they got him onto his side and Bucky spent the next minute or so coughing up water, as he'd predicted. Once he was done and fighting to regulate his breathing, Steve carefully threaded his hand into Bucky's hair, letting the touch comfort them both.

“So how’re we getting out of here, Steve?” Bucky asked him, breaking a short silence. 

“I tried to use the comms to call the team but it didn't work. We might be out of range. I don't know how deep underground they'll still function.”

“Shit.”

“That's not all, though. Buck, that octopus man rescued us both. Kept us from drowning and got us here.”

Steve didn't have to be able to see Bucky to know he was getting a supremely skeptical look. “And so where did it go?”

“I asked if he knew the way out of here,” Steve answered. “He's been gone a while now.”

Bucky sighed. “We're stuck, then.”

“For now,” Steve agreed. “But we have a source of water and you can bet the team will be searching for us.”

“For you, you mean,” Bucky disagreed, his tone bitter.

Biting back a sigh, Steve let it go. “Either way, I'm not leaving without you. Jerk.”

“Punk.” Bucky did sigh. “This definitely didn't go as planned.”

Taking Bucky's hand in his free one, he tugged until Bucky got the message and let Steve rearrange him. Steve got Bucky settled draped over his lap where he'd be more comfortable, and kept his hold on Bucky's hand. With his other, he started finger combing Bucky's hair.

“We'll wait here for a bit and see if our savior turns back up again. We've got access to water and our emergency rations. For now, you just let yourself recover.”

Bucky growled at him. “You better do the same, or I won't let you in the bed for a week. You can sleep on the sofa.”

The laugh that drew out of him hurt, and jostled Bucky, but it made a lot of the remaining stress drain back out of him. “We’ll see, Jerk, we’ll see.”


End file.
